College Life, Post Graduation

I've been back in Oakland for 9 days now, and the new semester seems to be in full swing. All of my friends are back in classes, and I'm working about 20 hours a week in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science department of the Swanson School of Engineering, along with a new babysitting gig I just picked up, and, of course, those birthday parties at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh. There is a nice rhythm to life right now, so I'm very hesitant for anyone to come in and change that.

This past weekend was certainly a whirlwind welcome-back-to-the-dirty-O, full of incredibleness. (Yes, I'm making that a word.) There was dancing: like a white girl, on table tops, with an adorable old man. There was drinking: beer, wine, rum, vodka, tequila, gin. And my personal favorite of the weekend, there was a crate race!

Let me explain. A crate race, in this case, consisted of teams of six people, with no more than three guys, and a case of beer (30 cans), two forties, a box of wine, and a fifth of liquor (at least 70 proof). Originally, we had at least four teams participating, but when it came down to it, we only got two competing teams: the United Kingdom (consisting of our friends Mike, Bruk, Becky, Lauren, Emily, and Tata*)(*Tata killed their fifth of rum in literally like 5 minutes. It was unreal!) and our team, the USSR, which was, from left to right in the picture below, Tom, Javid, Jess, myself, Anna, and Andres.


We thought we had this on lock, but Tata's performance was a little scary. But we ended up pulling through and winning! It was epic and so much fun! Here's us about three seconds after our victory:

In actuality, everyone ended up winning, because we all had such a good time, and we all got to hang out and drink and socialize. Even though a few of us may have been in pain the next day, it was definitely a pleasurable experience, and I would love to do it again soon!

To quote my friend Jess at the crate race: "Sometimes, I look around, and I'm so proud of what my friends have become." I agree, I really do love my friends, so I am one of the luckiest girls in the world.